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Is anyone who reads this going to the inauguration? I just got an email which claims to be from the Presidential Inaugural Committee and claims to be offering me inaugural tickets.

Did anyone else get this message? If it's a phishing scam then everyone probably got one. It's got to be either outright phishing and isn't from the PIC at all, or it is from the PIC and is offering me the "opportunity" to buy tickets to a $500 rubber chicken dinner or something. Because I thought the only way to get inaugural tickets was from your congressman or senator. I didn't even put in a request for tickets because I knew the demand would be so high.

The email has a link to Ticketmaster, and an account number and password they say is unique to me. The page wouldn't load (yes I did click the link, and yes it did go to Ticketmaster). There are probably ten million other people frantically trying to follow that link right now.

I searched on "inaugural ticket scam" and didn't find anything about this email specifically. Just warnings from back in November not to buy tickets to the swearing-in ceremony. I'll try the link again in the morning and see if I can figure out what this is all about.

The first day back at work always feels strange. I got a lot done today, which felt good, then got a headache around 4:30 and didn't get anything done on the great CD sort. Instead I spent the evening lazing around, finally doing the Sunday crossword puzzle, reading about Senator Al Franken on the blogs (and is that weird or what?), watching That's Entertainment! II and pricing digital recorders.

Yes, I don't have enough expensive gadgetry in my life. Apparently the ease with which I borrowed a recorder from the station last fall was an anomaly which I should not expect to repeat. I didn't realize how many news and interview programs they have on the schedule now, and those shows need the recorders all the time. I'm planning to need one once every couple of months at most, and might not be able to get one depending on what's going on with the news shows.

So if I want to be ready for situations like last weekend, and even to have a reliable way to record interviews planned in advance, I'm going to have to buy one. And seeing as there's a tech element, I have to read about it from every possible angle before making a purchase. The ones I'm looking at range from "kind of a lot of money" to "no way in hell can I afford that, but I sure want it."

The other options is that some friends in radio are talking about getting a good rig, better than I could ever get, and would lend it out to me. They're not in any hurry to buy though, and besides, the whole point is not to be dependent on an outside source. So I maybe should just get one for myself and be done with it.

I don't have to decide right this minute anyway. I don't even have another interview scheduled yet (though I do have inquiries out for a few).

In other news, Colbert is not that funny tonight. I think the Colmes thing is too close to reality.

It's been a show-riffic weekend, what with the interview yesterday, all the time spent trying to make the interview happen, then editing it last night -- which went well, if I do say so myself. Coincidentally just last week I had asked my friends in radio for their perspective on editing and they had given me an excellent piece of advice: I should always edit more than I think is necessary, and if I have any doubt about whether something should be in there, it shouldn't. Apparently this is because when people are editing their own audio, they tend to want to keep too much. If it feels like you're editing yourself too much, you've probably got it about right. I would imagine writers have the same problem. In fact I've seen it in action: many fine writers have turned out bloated books after they got successful enough to dictate the terms on which they would be edited.

Anyway, I took their advice to heart and edited the interview a lot. A lot. I cut it down from almost 18 minutes to about ten. I think it did make the interview sound better. Also I did the Eartha Kitt tribute, which turned out to be about an hour. Just the right length I think. I played almost everything I had wanted to, and all her hits. (Except "Santa Baby" which I had just played a couple of weeks ago on the Xmasville show.)

Since I got home I've been working on the website, updating the birthday list and working on the schedule of shows for the coming year. I like to do one theme show a month but it's largely dependent on who has a birthday on a Sunday. This year I'm going to have a lot:

• Jan 11 Latin a la Lounge (cohosted with Santa Salsera)
• Jan 25 Jungle Madness (all lounge/exotica)
• Feb 15 Harold Arlen
• April 5 Sweet Bands (all 20s/early 30s dance bands)
• May 3 Bing Crosby
• May 24 Memorial Day (all war music)
• May 31 Nelson Riddle
• June 28 Richard Rogers & Oscar Hammerstein
• July 5 Happy Birthday America (all songs about cities & states)
• August 9 Wayback Machine (will feature one year, haven't picked the year yet)
• Sept 13 Mel Torme
• Nov 22 Hoagy Carmichael
• Nov 29 Billy Strayhorn
• Dec 13 Frank Sinatra

November is going to be tough because I'll have to research for both Carmichael and Strayhorn. Damn them for being born seven days apart!

Then tonight it's back to the great CD sort. I decided to do each binder seperately rather than all in one go. It's probably a bit less efficient but I feel like I'm getting more done this way, so I'm more likely to stick with it. I started with the comps binder and have it completely refiled & all the label cards printed. Now I'm making sure everything is in the database. It's really tedious. But worth it, so I continue.

On air today from 2-4 pm with a tribute to Eartha Kitt and my interview with Sammy Davis Jr. impersonator Kenny Jones. The plan is to play Eartha for the first hour, and then the interview in the second hour. 88.7 if you're local, wxdu.org if you're not.

I just finished my interview with Kenny Jones, aka Sammy Davis Jr. from The Rat Pack is Back. (warning, linked site immediately plays music) I couldn't get the mic from the station so we did it by phone. Which ended up being better, because the first show today starts at 2 and there wouldn't have been much time if I'd had to go there & set up in his hotel room. On the phone we had more time because he called me from the hotel lobby, then they drove to the theater and he called me back from backstage. I think we talked about 20 minutes total.

He is a really interesting guy and it was great to hear his perspective on performing as Sammy. I wish I were at a bigger station so the interview would be better publicity for him! The sound quality on the recording is pretty bad because he was on a cell phone. Still, it's better than not getting the interview at all. One time we had to do a question over because a noisy group walked through the hotel lobby, but mostly the ambient noise wasn't too bad.

I asked him if he had any favorite Sammy songs for me to play in the show and he asked for a couple of great ones, both live: "Lady is a Tramp" and "Come Back to Me." The cool thing is, when he mentioned the latter he said "that was recorded in London with Buddy Rich" and I knew what album it was from. I was like "Ooh! Is that from Sounds of '66? That's a great album!" I was trying not to act like a total fangirl and I think that was the only time I geeked out.

He told me a little bit about their (grueling) 2009 tour schedule. They aren't coming back to the Triangle but they will be in Charlotte and Baltimore. Georg and I are already talking about going up to Baltimore to see it with our old friend Pru, who lives in Columbia MD. She was with us when we saw the earlier incarnation of the show in Vegas, back in 2001. So it will be great to see it with her again. Who knows, maybe we'll road trip to see them in Charlotte too. Anyone interested in seeing an awesome Rat Pack tribute show sometime this coming year?

I thought I had arranged to pick up the mic in the morning, then I found out that one of the station's 2 mics has been given to someone for the entire holiday, and the other one is on "semi-permanent loan," whatever that means, to someone who isn't even in Durham and may or may not have taken it with them.

They suggested I use my iPod to record. I've been researching and this would require me buying a mic for $25-75, which won't sound that good, and I may not even be able to get on such short notice because my iPod isn't very new so the newest mics won't work with it. Plus my iPod has almost no battery, and is so small that I wouldn't be able to record for long. I could also buy a mic for the computer. That might be easier to find and might sound better. But my computer is also running on a worn out battery so I'd have to buy a new computer battery too. I might or might not be able to get that at the Apple Store. Last time I checked there, they old sold batteries for really new computers & you had to special order for everything else. Besides, considering I need a mic about twice a year and the station is supposed to have decent ones available for us, I really don't want to have to buy one.

Well this sucks.

We went to a Rat Pack tribute show tonight. The show was fantastic! And I might get to interview the guy who played Sammy!

OK let me start at the beginning. Georg surprised me with tickets to The Rat Pack is Back as a Christmas present. We saw their show in Vegas back in 2001, at the Sahara, and it was really good. Then they had some kind of licensing issue, a conflict with another Rat Pack show or something? and the show stopped running. Every time we went back to Vegas we would talk wistfully about how we wished we could see the Rat Pack show again.

Well they finally resolved the issue, I think Georg said the two shows merged. And they're running the show in Vegas, at the Plaza hotel now, and also touring. And they came to Raleigh, and Georg bought tickets for us as a surprise! We had the best seats in the house. Third row center. Any closer and we would have been craning to look up at the stage & would have gotten stiff necks. The third row was the perfect distance and height.

The show was so good! They had Frank, Dean, Sammy and Joey backed by a 15 piece orchestra. All four impersonators did a really good job. The first time we saw the Rat Pack is Back, the show adhered fairly rigidly to an original Rat Pack Vegas show. In fact we think it was an exact duplication of an original show. This was much more flexible. They sang songs that weren't from the Vegas era, like "My Way" and "Mr. Bojangles." And told jokes which were clearly new (some were about Viagra) but very much in the spirit of the Rat Pack's raunchy humor (some were, um, about Viagra). For Rat Pack geeks like us, slavish devotion to the original is of course preferable. But I can understand why it's a better show for most people if they can play crowd-pleasing songs that happen to be newer, and I don't begrudge them that. People applauded wildly when Frank started singing "New York New York." I doubt most were thinking, "Frank never sang this song at a Rat Pack show! It hadn't even been written yet!"

As you know Bob, my favorite member of the Rat Pack is Sammy Davis Jr. And the fellow playing Sammy tonight, Kenny Jones, was very good. He had Sammy's style of movement dead on. There was one moment when they were all singing "Luck Be A Lady"* and Jones burst into some dance steps that just blew me away. He looked so much like Sammy. After the show the cast were in the lobby shaking hands and posing for photos, and I asked Jones if he would be free to do an interview for my show. He directed me to their manager, who didn't give me a definite yes but sounded positive since I said I could come to them and could do it on his schedule. They're only in town for two more days, and doing two shows both days, so it will be tough. I have to call the manager in the morning and I already arranged the pick up the mic from the station at 10:30 tomorrow. I hope we can work it out!

Oh lordie, I have to figure out what I'm going to ask him! I've never done a real interview before. The ones I did before were either mostly scripted, or I had done a lengthy pre-interview so I knew exactly what we were going to talk about.

*that was another liberty in the format; in the original Rat Pack shows Frank always sang "Luck Be a Lady" solo.

December 30 movie: The Cheaters. This was promoted as a "lost" Christmas movie, starring Joseph Schildkraut, Billie Burke and Eugene Pallette. It was okay. It didn't join my list of must see Christmas movies, but I'd watch it again. And probably will, when they show it next year on TCM.

And that's it for 2008! 275 movies last year. Not bad considering I saw almost no movies in October.

December 29 movie: Rage in Heaven. This is a strange movie starring Robert Montgomery, Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders. With a cast like that, they can't go wrong. All three stars are excellent, but Montgomery has most of the heavy lifting. He's the villain, and crazy to boot.

December 29 movie: The Guns of Navarone. I love this movie. It hangs together well and the cast is stellar. One gripe though, which involves spoilers so read no further if you haven't seen it.

December 25 movie: White Christmas. We watched the Yule Log in the morning, and then Bing and Rosemary and Danny and Vera in the afternoon. The perfect thing for Christmas Day.

December 23 movie: Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald: Live at Cote d'Azur. We watched this concert video with my dad. Georg and I had also watched it in early November, but I think I forgot to write it up then. There's some great footage on this DVD. First Ellington jams while Joan Miro hangs out and watches. Then they show rehearsals at the Cote d'Azur, then joined by Ella Fitzgerald for the final performance. Ella does spectacular versions of "Something to Live For" and "So Danco Samba."

Over the final credits there's a great bit with Ellington showing the audience how to act hip. He says to tilt the left earlobe down on the beat, then snap the finger after the beat. And don't push the hand down after snapping the finger; just let it drop.

December 22 movie: Destination: Tokyo. This is an excellent WWII drama starring Cary Grant and John Garfield. And a submarine! And John Forsythe! And Alan Hale!

If the first 12 hours are any indication, 2009 is going to be a great year.

The year began at Jujube where we winding down a fabulous dinner with D and S. It was a 9 course meal which started at 9 pm. I think we were about to have dessert when midnight struck. The entire meal was wonderful; I think the highlight was the char-siu style bacon. Another highlight was when D. and I almost came to blows over Daylight Savings Time. He's violently opposed to it; I'm equally opposed to standard time. Violence was averted when we discovered our shared opposition is to changing time: we should really just pick a time system and stick with it all year.

We got home around 1:30 and Georg went right to bed as he had to go to the station and work in the morning. Poor Georg! I was a bum and slept in, then spent the morning watching fantastic movies on TCM and typing up track listing cards for my new CDs. And, we finally have Bravo! I recorded a bunch of Project Runways yesterday to watch when Georg gets home. What a great start to the year.

It's almost the New Year, and time for a new project! Well, not new exactly. Something I've been meaning to do for awhile: go through the Divaville Lounge CDs. Move them around to make sure there's enough space in the binders, find and refile the odd CD that got misfiled, make label cards for the new acquisitions, and make sure everything is in the database.

I've been meaning to do this ever since I bought a 10-CD set of Artie Shaw and realized there wasn't room for any of it in the main CD case. Going through all those CDs seemed like such a slog that I put it off, left the Artie Shaw set in its box and just brought it to shows in my purse. Now I have my Christmas presents too (yay for family who know I want music and get me good things I really need, not a dud in the lot), and I just can't put it off any longer.

This is the perfect time to go through the CDs because I've got all day Thursday to work on it. Because it has to be done by my next show for obvious reasons. This way I won't have a frantic Sunday morning trying to cram all the CDs into the case so I can take them to the station. (Been there, rather not do it again.)

I started this evening and I've already made lots of progress. I have two cases, one for single artist CDs and one for compilations. Well, the single artist CDs fill the entire first case and spill over into the second. So to be precise, the first case is A to Nina Simone, and the second case is Frank Sinatra to Z, then comps, then lounge/exotica, then Christmas. (It's an odd system that works for me.) Last time around I filled the single-artist case almost completely and left all the blank spaces in the comps case. Which was the wrong way around as it turns out: I almost never buy comps anymore, except Christmas music. For regular music it's almost always single artist CDs or sets. Which means that when I get something new, there's never any room for it in the case.

This time I'm compressing the comps section, leaving only a few spaces where I think I'll need them. I think this will make enough room for all the new CDs plus things I'm planning to get in the next few months. Hope so!